PART 2
I’ve done this before. Too many times.
I laid Lulu on her side on the warm stone steps. I put my hand under her head. I checked my watch. The old woman started praying in Spanish. The police officer knelt beside me.
At two minutes, I unzipped the pouch my mother had been carrying all day and gave Lulu her emergency nasal spray.
At three and a half minutes, her body relaxed.
At five, she opened her eyes and whispered, “Mom?”
I have never been so grateful to hear one word.
The officer called an ambulance. At the hospital in San Miguel, a doctor said Lulu had been dehydrated and overheated for hours. That, plus the stress of being left alone, had triggered the seizure.
“If you had not had the medicine,” he said, “this would have been much more serious.”
The old woman from the church had found Lulu wandering, dizzy, two hours earlier. Her name was Doña Remedios. She’d given her water and sat with her in the shade, waiting for someone to come.
She didn’t speak English. Lulu didn’t speak Spanish. They held hands anyway.
The cruise line’s port agent met us at the hospital. The security officer had already sent his report. He’d written down everything my mother said at the gangway. Word for word. So had two passengers, who emailed the cruise line that night.
The cruise line flew Lulu and me home two days later at no charge.
My mother texted me from the ship.
“I hope you’re happy. You ruined our anniversary.”
I didn’t answer.
When the ship docked in Florida, my parents found out the cruise line had banned Mom and Desiree from future sailings for “abandoning a minor in their care.”
Then my father found out something else.
Lulu had told me in the hospital. Grandma hadn’t lost her in the market. Grandma had told her to sit by the fountain and wait while they “ran to one more store.”
Then they walked back to the ship without her.
“It was on purpose,” Lulu said. “Aunt Desiree said, ‘Good, now we can have a normal day.’”
My father called me that night. He was crying.
“I didn’t know,” he said. “Holly, I swear I didn’t know.”
“I know, Dad.”
He moved into the guest room for a while. Then into his own apartment.
I filed a report with the police. Leaving a child with a medical condition alone in a foreign country, without her medicine, is child endangerment in our state too.
My mother hired a lawyer. Desiree stopped speaking to all of us.
I don’t speak to either of them now.
Last month, Lulu and I flew back to Cozumel.
Just the two of us.
We found the little church past the market. Doña Remedios was sitting on the same steps.
Lulu ran up and hugged her.
She had learned one sentence in Spanish for the trip. She’d practiced it for weeks.
“Gracias por quedarte conmigo.”
Thank you for staying with me.
THE END.
